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Brynn Lynagh
ENGL 102-H03
8 September 2022
Ventanitas

The soft, rosy glow crept silently across the wall, illuminating each frame like an aura. It

was coaxing her back into the landscapes which once painted the backdrops of her dearest

memories. Each scene now hangs frozen in its frame, views from all over the world reproduced

on her wall like little windows into her memories. Wind drifts from one frame into the next; it

whips the Borinquen banner, echoes between the pillars of the regal Alhambra, and whistles

through the methodically carved, stone windows of the Sacred Plaza.

Her gaze fixes on the sunny seascape. Sunlight dances over the rolling sands, reflecting

an unseen sun perched loftily among the clouds. Pearly white pavilions are planted firmly in the

golden sand, unwavering to the breeze. The vacant terraces ache for someone’s sandals to

promenade across their polished planks, but there is not a soul in sight. The city dissolves into

the clouds beyond the radiant beach, its grandiose architecture presumed or forgotten; like the

cherubim in The Immaculate Conception, its elegance is taken for granted, and is not the ‘belle’

of this ‘ball’. Palm trees soar over the scene and scrape the surface of a sapphire sky. Not even

the dusk-colored cloud emerging, centered in the frame, could threaten the radiance of La Caleta.

The creased corners of the flimsy cardstock print peel away from the wall, its edges well-worn

from its journey to permanent exhibition on her bedroom wall. The artist’s name lingers, illegibly

scrawled in the bottom right hand corner, opposite “171/500”, betraying that this piece is

certainly not the only one of its kind. In fact, at least 170 others before her were compelled to

immortalize the same vista in their memory and on their own wall.
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One hundred and seventy tourists, students, newly-weds, historians, and explorers who

discovered the same little gallery, nestled between a bakery and a florist just off of Calle

Cervantes in Cádiz, Spain. Each will remember their own unique moments on the beloved beach

while gazing at their duplicate sunny seascape. She would glimpse her moments, too, flashing

fleetingly across the empty sands like a strike of summer lightning. The shrill, screeching of the

wheels on reluctant coolers being dragged through the thick sand, and the persistent outcry of

“tintos? colas? cerveza?” as the salesmen prowled under a cresting sun. The sweet, piercing

citrus of the Tierra Blanca wine on their first date, the low-pitched hum of distant, drunken

Spanish singers, and the gliding strokes of the boy from Jordan’s calligraphy pen illustrating her

“Arabic name” as the honey-hued sun dipped into the brilliant blue waters. It is for the memory

of these moments that she purchased the print, tucked it gingerly in her suitcase, and plastered

new command strips on its creased corners with every change of address.

Every traveler commemorates their escapades, whether by taping ticket stubs into a

scrapbook, procuring distinctive art, or sending postcards home to loved ones. Souvenirs are

emblematic of time immersed in another culture. It’s human nature to document the experiences

which one uses to define themselves. Keeping a record of adventures preserves how they felt and

what they learned in a world separate from the realities and responsibilities of daily life. A

seasoned traveler could never adorn their wall with just any seascape; they must have stood in

the artist’s vantage point themselves. Hers is a gallery wall, covered in little windows into her

travels, each reminiscent of the most alive, the most herself, and the most connected to others she

has ever felt. Atop her little windows like a crown sits her rosy pink neon sign, declaring in

delicate cursive script, “Me deslumbras”—“You dazzle me”. Not only the neon lends the frames

their blushing aura, but her own rosy retrospection of the moments they echo.